Totally Unfair and Completely Unbalanced

Well, I’m doing a bit better today–at least my nose isn’t dripping like a faucet. How I LOVE winter colds! Add to that, an old filling came out and the dentist examined the tooth and guess what? I need another crown! I swear, I’ll have nothing but crowns in my mouth in a few years, more than the crowned heads left in Europe.

Anyway, it took me longer to do today’s episode, the final one of 2013. That’s right, as Revolutionary Grrl gets chased by motorcycle cops, appearing from what suspiciously looks like the entrance to the underpass at Dupont Circle, and ducks around a corner, we leave her for the winter hiatus. Christmas and New Year’s, Russian Christmas (a staple in my family)–my, that red lettering in the cartoon is mighty Festive! I have lots to do before the convention season begins in February, so I’ll stay on hiatus until January 20. OK, sorry about coming back Martin Luther King Day, but, better I take off the 13th and return the next week, than come back for one episode and then have another break the very the next week.

Speaking about winter holidays, tho’, it seems there is a brouhahahahahaha going on about Santa Claus. Wow, did you realize that he was really a WHITE GUY? Thanks, Megyn Kelly of Fox News, you’ve certainly put all those little black kids in their places:

He sees you when you’re sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake,
He’s built a cross that he will stake
And burn just to make you quake!”

Ah, how I’m dreaming of a WHITE CHRISTMAS, Megyn! Just as white as the blue-eyed, golden-haired Jesus that you’ve painted for me. I’d drink an eggnog to you, but with that yellow egg yolk and brown brandy and nutmeg, it might not be white enough for you. How about some milk–with the cookies you put out for Santa. That’s right, VANILLA WAFERS. Oreos and chocolate chips? Much too suspiciously multi-cultural for your White Christmas.

Anyway, Happy Holidays, people! And for you non-Christians, Happy Kwanza, Gode Yule, Festivus for the Rest of us, and most of all, have a Sated Saturnalia. IO! SATURNALIA! And fear not–We’ll actually get to the plot before Katsucon in February! And remember to vote this up on Reddit and LIKE it on Facebook! See you next year!

Bill O’Reilly and the Faux News crowd are in the middle of their annual War On The War Against Christmas, dredging up every incident of Happy Holiday-ism they can find in an effort to show how anti-Christmas America has become. Bill also argued that Christianity isn’t a religion, but a philosophy. Not to say that a good Catholic boy like O’Reilly has a fundamental misunderstanding of either Christmas or Christianity, let’s take his statements at face value for a moment.

As the Spirit of Christmas Present says to Scrooge (in the Alastair Sim movie but not the book), “We Spirits of Christmas do not live but one day a year, we live the entire 365.” And what is that “spirit of Christmas”? Buying gifts? Setting up Nativity scenes? Randy office parties? Santa Claus? No, the true Christmas spirit is “Peace on earth, good will towards men.” It means not going to war unless you really have to. It means giving to those less fortunate. It means going the extra mile for your fellow man. Not just in December, but all January through November as well. Above all, it means ANYTHING but paying attention to Ayn Rand.

That’s the Christian philosophy in a nutshell, Bill. And your cohorts, the Republicans in the Senate, showed just how much true Christmas spirit they had when they turned down the UN treaty on the disabled. Never mind that John McCain endorsed it, George H. W. Bush endorsed it, Bob Dole was wheeled in from his deathbed (as Jon Stewart put it) to endorse it. Never mind that it was based on OUR OWN LAWS. The Republican bloc but a handful voted it down because it raised serious concerns about our sovereignty (all treaties do–that’s part of the reason we have them), it was a socialist plot from the hated UN, it was an attack on home schooling according to Paul Ryan, the idiot we were spared from having as Vice President a few weeks ago. But above all, because Barack Obama wanted it.

Nice going, guys–maybe you’d like a chance to repeal our own disability laws now. After all, building ramps might cut into corporate profits.

Oh. And Merry Christmas.

Happy Hanukah to all our Jewish friends (as they say on the news). We will be taking our winter hiatus after our annual HOLIDAY card next week.

It’s going to be a tougher election than it should be. Tough voter ID laws have been enacted in far too many states specifically designed to make it tough for “brown” people, poor people and college students to vote. Two important states, Ohio and Florida, have precipitously cut back their early voting hours. And the United States is still filled with idiots who think Barack Obama is an atheist Muslim born in Kenya.

Mitt Romney SHOULD lose. After all, his entire plan for the country is to bankrupt it and all citizens with incomes less than a million a year and then sell it off to China. That’s his M.O. You’d think people would have caught on to it. Certainly not the Fox News-watching crowd–you know, the ones who didn’t know how big Hurricane Sandy had gotten and when they DID hear, thought: “Good–it’s time for them America-hating New Yorkers to suffer like the rest of us.”

Chris Christie got thrown under the bus for actually deigning to appear with President Obama as they toured the devastation in New Jersey. The GOP better hope the bus doesn’t overturn–Christie is a big bump in the road.

So on Tuesday, as one commentator said, America gets the choice of turning back the clock–by fifty years. Let’s hope that we as a nation are not THAT INSANE. You liberals thinking you won’t vote because you are mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo, not getting universal health and waging war by remote control–think of the alternative. Now go out and vote.

THIS WEEK, yours truly will be in the Artists Alley at ANIMEUSA in Washington DC. Anyone who is an animefan and is going to the con, please drop by my table! I’ll also be giving panels on inking your comics and how to plan your manga. And, in connection with this, I inaugurate my new Facebook Fanpage. LIKE it and get news about my other artworks as they are produced and get progress reports on my graphic novel HANAKO-SAN, now being storyboarded.

Have a good week and VOTE. See you soon.

Please to remember the 5th of November, gunpowder treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason ever should be forgot…

President Obama made a surprise trip to Kabul the other week as part of his up-and-running campaign against the Mittster to emphasize that HE was the one to have success in our Middle Eastern snafu, that the troops supported him and–possibly an afterthought–shore up some agreements about our post-2014-withdrawal presence in Afghanistan. What? you say–we’re going to keep a presence in Afghanistan? You bet your bippy. We still have a “presence” in Italy, Germany and Japan, 67 years after the end of WWII, much to the dismay of the Japanese although, except for the Okinawans, nobody is saying it very loud.

So the issue is, how many troops will we keep in Afghanistan after we remove all our troops from Afghanistan? I bet you thought “removing all our troops” mean “removing all our troops”! How cute! Don’t you know? According to the President, we’re still fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

AHhhh, the magic word! Al-Qaeda! Everything is justified after 9-11 by the use of that name! It justifies almost 11 long hard years of wasting countless dollars and thousands of American lives–not to mention the 100s of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan lives–and is the ne plus ultra raison d’etre for this morass (and I do mean MORE ASS!).

Now you may argue that there’s really only two al-Qaeda operatives IN Afghanistan since almost all of the left for Pakistan. We don’t really know what we know about al-Qaeda levels–it’s one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s unknown knowns. But that’s the way we are. We can’t make war on an ally, so we do the next best thing and make war on their next-door neighbor to prove how tough we are. That doesn’t mean we can’t break the rule sovereignity by pulling an assassination raid in Pakistan to get rid of Osama bin Laden–al-Qaeda again justified it!

Now our friends on the Republican side of the aisle and Fox and Friends have been raising a stink lately (a year later) over whether or not Obama SHOULD have authorized a raid that THEY would have authorized in a New York minute but now have to be critical of since Obama led the charge. AND getting upset that Obama is “spiking the ball” for having accomplished it, forgetting that George W. Bush spiked the ball on first down before we’d gotten anywhere NEAR the endzone. But that’s the way it is. Remember, they were FOR killing Osama before they were against it!

The I Ching says the superior man’s actions are both good AND correct. Unfortunately, superior men seem to be in short supply in politics today.

I will be in the Philadelphia area next weekend for ZENKAIKON, specifically, the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, PA, May 11-12. I’ll be returning on Sunday, so I won’t be doing a cartoon next weekend, but will return on the 20th. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!

Two stories of note this week: the shooting of Trayvon Martin–which actually occurred a month ago today–and Dick Cheney’s new bundle of joy. I’ve always found myself to have a reluctance to draw cartoons about things that are sad. Things that make me angry on the other hand are fair game. And the shooting of Trayvon Martin makes me sad. But the reaction of the Fox News types is worth derision.

On one hand, you have Geraldo Rivera admonishing the dead kid about wearing a hoodie because it looks too “gangsta.” And then you have New Gringrich admonishing the President about noticing the kid was black. No two ways, Fox, it’s either racist or it ain’t. Add to this the “stand your ground” fans backing up shooter Zimmerman saying that he was only doing his job–self-appointed and told by the 911 operator not to pursue–and you start to wonder if their heads are in so far, will these guys ever see daylight again?

Fortunately, Melissa Harris-Perry took care of Geraldo, and the electorate looks like it will be taking care of Newt. And Paul Krugman reveals the truth about American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate shills behind the “stand your ground” laws.

Which leaves us Dick Cheney. The sight of all the people wishing him well with prayers for a speedy recovery—including those who’ve accused him of being a war-profiteer, a war criminal, and responsible for the sinking of the US reputation to historic lows by ‘OK’ing tortures the Japanese were hanged for after WWII—warms my heart. This is the mark of a civil society. We do live by the Golden Rule: Do not do unto the previous Administration as you would not have the next Administration do unto you.

Now a churlish man would be making comments about Mr. Cheney’s heart transplant like “Where’d they find one that small?” Or, “This one is perfect, Igor, MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Or, “Wow, the old one really was made of stone–this will fetch a high price on EBAY!” But we won’t do so. Instead, we’ve decided to honor Mr. Cheney with some verses of a song:

Dick had to have heart,
Cheney really needed heart.
They kept saying that you didn’t have one.
But here’s one for a fresh start!

You never lost hope,
When they kept on saying nope,
Like with those weapons that could never be found,
Those visions were sound, your critics dopes.

Don’t you think of Halliburton,
And the profits from the war,
You will only feel some hurtin’,
And who knows what you’d outpour
to an enhanced interrogation!

So pick up the phone,
And when you hear the dial tone,
Tell your friend that you are sorry you graced
with buckshot his face,
it wasn’t smart,
Now you’ve finally got heart.

CALENDAR

NOTE ON COMMENTS

98% of the comments I received were from spammers--you know, "Great post--it has really changed my life--see this ad for penile enlargement." So I've decided to abandon comments. In the meantime, if you want to send me any missives, pro or con, write to me at gregoriusu01 (at) gmail.com. You know what to do with the (at). THERE--see if you can declare THAT domain SPAM, Google!